page_title: Robert Whitehead
section_title: The first torpedo
hierarchical_section_title: Robert Whitehead / The first torpedo
context_page_description: Robert Whitehead was an English engineer who was most famous for developing the first effective self-propelled naval torpedo.
context_section_description: Whitehead's initial torpedo experiments were conducted with the help of his 12-year-old son, John, and a workman, Annibale Ploech. They discarded Luppis' concept of shore launch and control for an unguided weapon launched from a ship on a straight line at the target which became known as the Whitehead torpedo.
  This resulted in Minenschiff, the first self-propelled (locomotive) torpedo, officially presented to the Austrian Imperial Naval commission on 21 December 1866. The commission was impressed and the Austrian gunboat Gemse was adapted for launching torpedoes at the Schiavon shipyard in Fiume.  The ship was equipped with a launching barrel, which was Whitehead's invention.  More than 50 launch trials were performed in front of the factory, in Fiume harbour bay. Gemse's commander, Frigate Lieutenant Count Georg Anton von Hoyos, later married Whitehead's daughter Alice.
  By 1870, Whitehead had managed to increase the torpedo's speed to 7 knots (13 km/h) and it could hit a target 700 yards (640 m) away.  The torpedo was driven by a small reciprocating engine run by compressed air.
caption: Robert Whitehead (right) and his son (left) with a battered test torpedo in Fiume, Austria-Hungary c.1875
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